The Elder Scrolls Online Previews

We still don’t know a lot about The Elder Scrolls Online so I’d imagine you’d be interested in reading a couple of articles on the title.

PC Gamer is offering an overview that aims to provide “everything you need to know” about the MMO:

Game Informer have revealed that The Elder Scrolls Online will be third-person with action bar combat. As such, it differs substantially from the recent games in the series.

You’re limited to a certain number of skills at any given time, a system that sounds similar to Diablo 3 or Guild Wars 2 both promising models. Zenimax Online’s focus is reportedly to make each ability important and fun to use in its own right.

Also similar to Guild Wars 2, it’ll be possible for players to casually group simply by pitching in and helping each other in the wild you won’t need to ask for an invite to get kill credit.

Despite the MMO trappings, familiar elements from the single player Elder Scrolls games will be present. These include guilds, including the Mages Guild, and birthsigns. Skyrim allows players to switch birthsigns on the fly, and we don’t yet know whether The Elder Scrolls Online will go with this system or opt for the previous, chosen-at-character-creation model for assigning bonuses.

While EDGE has a write-up on the title’s public dungeons:

“When you think back to the fun MMOG moments in the first generation, it’s standing there, terrified, in an enclosed space, waiting for someone to come along and save you. We can’t do that punitive gameplay that they did in those days, but we can put people together in places where they want to work with others.)

Public dungeons are crucial to one of The Elder Scrolls Online’s central ambitions for socialising: to see players meeting each other in the game world rather than the interfaces. (They’re basically a space that’s designed for people who are not grouped together to go into to fight,” Firor says. “It’s a great place for people to connect with other players and they’re very important to us, although we still have instanced private dungeons and end-game raid dungeons for groups of up to six players too.